From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.9) Gecko/20020311 BuildID: 2002031104 Windows 2k SP2, if that matters. I'm using "Immersion(R) TouchWare(R) Desktop 2.5 Version 2.5.0.13" (hey man, that's what the "About" box says.) which, coupled with my iFeel mouse, gives me all sorts of neat vibration feedback when I mouse over various widgets and whatnot. On IE and Netscape 4.79, I get a lot of these vibrations, the most important being when I mouse over a link. This feature has never worked for me in Mozilla. (I do get *some* feedback, for example, the menus in Mozilla give feeback. The URLbar pulldown gives feedback. Scroll bars don't. (But they don't in IE, either)) Doing some research in bugzilla, I only found two other bugs mentioning "immersion" (Bugs 116796 and 88070) so I filed this to the same "Browser/XP Widgets" product and component. However, further research indicates that this might be related to Accessiblity, in which case it should probably be refiled. It may also be related to Immersion desktop software not fully supporting Mozilla, in which case this should probably be refiled as an evangalism bug. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, in which case, you should smack me. This feature didn't work with older versions of Immersion Desktop, either. You can download Immersion Desktop here: http://www.immersion.com/products/ce/twBus/download.php Not sure that helps you without an iFeel mouse, though. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Buy an iFeel mouse, install, and enable Immersion Desktop 2. Install Mozilla 3. Mouse over a link Actual Results: Nothing Expected Results: My mouse should vibrate.

That must be a bug with the Immersion desktop, because they use MSAA information. We expose MSAA information on links just the same way Internet Explorer does.

Alright, I finally found Immersion's own web page describing this issue: http://www.immersion.com/developer/community/faq/faqGeneral.php#G_P_2 Advocacy/evangalism issue? They say Mozilla doesn't support Active Accessibility anymore. What the heck, to thwart the ethereal nature of links, I'll just cutnpaste their answer here: Q: Why can't I feel hyperlinks or authored touch sensations with Netscape 6? A: If you are using Netscape 6 or above, you will not feel any hyperlinks or form elements on the web pages you visit because Netscape 6 no longer supports a feature known as Active Accessibility, which is used by the Immersion Touchware Desktop software. In addition, it is not possible to feel authored sensations in web pages or online Flash or Shockwave animations in Netscape 6. Netscape's plugin architecture changed drastically in this latest version of the browser, and the Immersion Web Netscape Plugin, which allows touch sensations to be felt in the 4.x family of Netscape browsers, does not work with Netscape 6. To feel hyperlinks, form elements, and authored sensations on the web, please use another browser like Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 or above, or a version of Netscape 4.x.

I agree this is an evangelism issue. We do support Active Accessibility. That is how we expose links. I know Immersion Desktop uses Active Accessibility to know what widgets there are on the screen.

-> aaronl

.

*puzzled* I guess if we do support MSAA, their FAQ needs to be updated to reflect this. It looks like there's still the issue of plugin support though. Also, the first comment says explicitely that there is no feedback when hovering over links, how does that fall under evangelism?

I know they utilize MSAA info because when I load the Immersion Desktop on my system, it calls into our MSAA code. We need to get in touch with one of the developers there and find out what's happening on their end with the information, and why they're getting it if they're not using it.

I have contacted the Immersion Corporation at developer@immersion.com. Hopefully they'll get back to us. They have an excellent developer page at http://www.immersion.com/developer/

Here's the email I got from developer@immersion.com Hello, Aaron. I bounced your question off some heads. I summarized my findings as follows, Condensed "facts" ----------------- 1) Hyperlinks are detected by a mouse hook. 2) This mouse hook looks at the "class" of the object. 3) Netscape (>6.2) uses only one "class" for all its windows causing problems with current hyperlink detection algorithm. 4) Presently, the mouse tracker ignores Netscape windows to avoid problems. This explains why you are not feeling hyperlinks. It is explained in more detail below. Immersion needs to develop a hyperlink detection algorithm that works with later versions of Netscape. "Technical" prose ----------------- Support for Netscape 4.x: Implementation was done on top of mouse move. Detection algorithms are based on specific Afx window classes that were still being used in Netscape. This is how toolbar buttons were detected. This type of detection is only valid for Netscape 4.x because newer versions of Netscape do not use these Afx window classes - and limit all window declared in Netscape to one Netscape specific class. Support for Netscape 6.0,6.1,6.2: There is no implementation specific to these versions of Netscape. An investigation was performed on the complexity in adding detection. That investigation focused on using API hooking to intercept certain windows operations. Hyperlink and text selection was implemented for this investigation. Note: Menus are detected using straight AA hooks. Netscape 6.x uses MS Windows menus for its browser GUI - and thus menus are detected in this version. But it should be remembered that this is not Netscape specific - this is how all menus are detected. Support for Mozilla 0.9.9/Netscape (>6.2) From the e mail below, AA has been activated for [hyperlink] objects on HTML pages. The reason this was not working with the current version of Desktop is because hyperlink detection is done inside a mouse hook. Inside the mouse hook Desktop (Tracker specifically) retrieves the class name of the window the mouse is over. This class name is used to determine what type of detection will follow. Since tracker does not monitor any Netscape windows, it does not do any type of detection when the mouse is over them. I have implemented a quick test that activated detection of the one and only Mozilla/Netscape window. Hyperlinks were detected properly. But since Mozilla/Netscape uses only one class for all its windows the type of detection is very global - and causes multiple forces to play (on some objects). So we will need some more time to clean up detection specific to these newer versions of Mozilla/Netscape that incorporate AA.

I wrote back (to developer@immersion.com): Hello, We don't actually support regular Microsoft Windows menus, so I don't know where that impression came from. Starting in Netscape 6.2, everything in our user interface, including menus, uses non-native widgets. If it's working, it's because you're using MSAA. I do know that Immersion Desktop uses some MSAA. We are now fully supporting MSAA in our nightly builds. Your developers can work with our current MSAA implementation by downloading a nightly Mozilla at http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/latest/mozilla-win32-installer.exe The MSAA should be used to find where links are within Mozilla/Gecko/Netscape products (using MozillaWindowClass), rather than window class names. - Aaron

They wrote back: Thanks for the info. I will forward this on to the desktop group. Unfortunately, you will not be able to feel hyperlinks until we revisit our hyperlink detection algorithm.

Now that they've written to tell us this is something to change in their code, how do we mark up this bug?

Since this is a tech evang. bug I would keep it open, and mark it fixed once they've fixed (or have committed to fixing) their software.

Aaron, since you have dealt with them on this issue, I am giving this bug to you. Have they released a new version of this product since the last contact? Did they give you any idea on when the update to support us would be made? If so set the target milestone to that month and follow up with them then. If they aren't going to fix this, then mark it wontfix and move on.

Actually, Doron Rosenberg has been dealing with them now. I guess they're writing a plugin now.

Note, two users report immediate Phoenix crashes with iFeel enabled: http://www.mozillazine.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=67955#67955 I'm just passing this along, I don't know much about it. My research also found two crash bugs involving iDesktop, both closed: Bug 88070 and Bug 116796 And a duplicate for this bug: Bug 73550

A lot of code was changed in an accessibility rearchitecure recently, so I'm not surprised. Can I get a talkback number/report?

I have no more info. We Phoenix users are not good talkbackers (yet).

tech evang june 2003 reorg

*** Bug 73550 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Is this still an issue ?

As far as I can tell, Immersion doesn't update their software anymore, and there aren't any devices which use their technology anymore either. There's nothing for Mozilla to do here, (either in the form of code fixes, or in the form of evangelism) so I say wontfix.